About Natural Way of Being Services

The Evolution of a Natural Way of Being Services

I began my training with Bart Anderson, Spiritual Teacher, Zen Master, and Shaman in 1985. It would continue for the next 22 years. While Bart opened the door, the following evolution of a natural way of being is a product of the work that unfolded between he and his students.​The teaching started as a guided meditation class in Bart's home. The meditations allowed students to awaken and experience their natural way of being inside themselves. He would teach via a dharma talk and then guide his students on a journey inside themselves. Mythology and Jungian symbolism allowed interpretation of the meditations to provide guidance directly from each person's inner consciousness. While Bart's teaching was always based on his own spiritual awakenings and truth that he experienced, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism and Jungian psychology provided a format and language to teach.​Bart also studied for years with Grandfather Wallace, a Lakota Sioux Medicine Man, and several other Native American spiritual leaders. In 1986, he began to use Native American ceremony in his teaching. Ceremony allowed the internal dynamics to be brought out and worked with. Sharing circles enhanced experiencing students' truth and understanding for themselves. We also started the tradition to gather annually for a week of ceremony in the mountains during the Summer Solstice and a long weekend for the Spring Equinox. The ceremonies included Vision Quest, Sweat Lodge, Medicine Wheel and Sharing Circle.​When one of his students moved to Dallas, Texas, Bart stared doing weekend seminars there. The weekend seminars allowed participants to walk through a complete transition inside themselves. By 1987 the Dallas workshops expanded to Santa Barbara, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas. He added a five-week intensive class series to follow the workshops to help people integrate the work into their lives. In the fall of 1987 for a year, I accompanied Bart to these locations for weekend seminars and intensive classes as an apprentice. This apprenticeship was the beginning of a formal training to be a teacher of what I would later name the natural way of being. The teaching was a direct transmission that centered around orchestrating spaces for students to awaken a new aspects of themselves and guiding them to integrate it into their lives.​The work continued to evolve through the nineties in the form of seminars, classes, annual ceremonies, and phone sessions to students in the various locations. The teaching would have new theme every year with such topics as "personal mythology", "the way of the warrior", and "opening new doors". The thing that distinguished this work was its purity, clarity, and invitation to experience your truth for yourself.​A new tradition began to unfold that was different than its eclectic roots of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jungian psychology, and Native American spirituality. A new vocabulary to clearly describe aspects the work began to evolve. This new tradition was based on the spiritual unfoldment process that occurred while living in the contemporary world. It calls for a social reform of transforming ourselves and our culture into a more collaborative, natural way of being.​In 2004, Bart, Steven Young and James Barfoot, and myself created a subsistence farm and teaching center outside Walla Walla, Washington. It had a huge garden, two cows, three pigs and numerous chickens. The intention for Bart to teach and directly experience as much as possible about the cycle of life and our true nature. The work here became the current basis of a natural way of being. This intensive teaching would continue until Bart passed in the summer of 2007.

The work during this period centered around unfolding a new way to live. Bart distinguished between karmic and dharmic ways of being. Karmic described the fear-based, predatory, and limited way that is prevalent in our culture, while dharmic introduced way of being based on accessing pure possibility and walking with your heart open. It taught a collaborative way of living and seeing yourself as "one of the people". It also stressed the importance of making a difference by offering a pure expression of your heart or Buddha nature to the people.

On Easter Sunday in April of 2007. Bart Anderson, myself and others were having a formal Easter dinner. During the dinner table discussion, I said something about making a difference through counseling. Bart responded that counseling is not enough. He stated, “You have to teach.” After I expressed some doubt around teaching he continued by telling me, “You are ready to teach. That is why they come to you. You have to teach people a new way of being.”

I continued the work in the form of writing, workshops, classes and individual sessions. I launched my "Personal Transformation" business and began publishing a blog in 2009. I did my first weekend workshop called "Metamorphosis" in 2010. In September of 2013, I completed my first book, Your Natural Gift- Offering the Essence of Your Heart, to guide people through the unfoldment of their natural gift. I taught Offering Your Natural Gift workshops and classes that guided participants to experience identifying, unlocking, awakening, and offering their natural gift.​I moved to Bend, Oregon in 2014 and reformatted my business to offer counseling, workshops, and classes. I began writing my new book, A Natural Way of Being, in January of 2015. This approach to the work resonated so much while writing that I renamed my business Natural Way of Being Services in August of 2015. The book is going to be published in the spring of 2018.​Natural Way of Being Services presently offers counseling, on-line classes, and experiential workshops for people to enjoy life and unfold their natural way of being. I use psychotherapy, meditation, Native American ceremony, rites of passage, sharing circles, dream interpretation, and other experiential modalities for people to directly experience their essence and natural way of being.

In December 2017, I am expanding my counseling, consulting, and classes online through video conferencing. I am excited that the first online course in January, 2018 will include people participating in-person and remotely. There is something about interacting with people in the room the creates authenticity. I am determined to extend the experience of a live sharing circle ceremony to your living room or office when you participate online.

"When I first contemplated writing The Natural Way of Being in January of 2015, I realized that the thing that was needed most at this time in our world was teaching people a new a way of being. It was not enough to plaster counseling and teachings onto an errant operating system. We needed to awaken and unfold a more natural and collaborative way of being."~ Michael Hoffman, Natural Way of Being, 2018